There Is Such Joy In Face to Face Connection

I read with great interest the May issue on What Makes Meeting Strong? It made me reflect on the importance of SA meetings for my recovery, especially when the global lockdown could potentially have shut down SA meetings. Fortunately, our fellowship has responded strongly by using virtual meetings.

Yet, Step Zero echoes in my mind. As a loner at the start of my journey in sobriety, phone and Skype meetings were important lifelines for me, but my sponsor urged me to attend ‘open’ AA meetings, and travel sometimes long distances to conventions and other SA events.

While virtual meetings have a lot going for them, I note that they tend to gravitate to being not just “meetings” but groups, having service positions, service rotation, collect a 7th tradition, and being focused on the primary purpose of carrying its message to the sexaholic who still suffers (Tradition 5). This reminds me that I need to commit myself to my group, because “the measure of such commitment will be the measure of your recovery” (SA 64).

And if my online meeting is not collecting a 7th tradition, then are we harming the ability of the Intergroup, Region, and eventually SAICO, to serve sexaholics? As a member of my Region’s Finance Committee, I have seen how a drying-up of Intergroup donations to region has, in turn, started to potentially affect donations upwards to SAICO. At the root of this lack of group donations to Intergroups.

My home group has been meeting again face to face since September 2020, as the group conscience indicated a deep desire for face to face connection. We make it possible for members who are housebound to join via a high speed internet connection, using a condenser microphone. We don’t advertise our group’s virtual meeting availability outside our geographic region, as the group conscience decided to keep the meeting local.

We have held a face to face recovery day attended by 12 fellows from across the country. Our group has grown, and has had several newcomers: we keep on with the practice of meeting a newcomer for a coffee and a chat before they step in to their first meeting, and try to connect them with a sponsor as soon as they can accept that. What a difference from the months of lockdown, when we had only one newcomer, who never attended a (virtual) meeting. How many newcomers to a virtual meeting really receive the help they need, if there is no ‘after the meeting’ opportunity to connect? They can just click and disappear!

I also sometimes talk to fellows from previously large meetings in large cities, where meetings could now happen face to face, and yet they are still happening only virtually. This surprises me: there is such joy and recovery in face to face connection, and when I am tempted to attend meetings virtually instead of face to face I wonder if my disease is convincing me to short-change my recovery.